The Last Son of Tomorrow
by rgm0005
Summary: In the wake of the Qwardian Invasions, the Anti-Monitor lies defeated. And yet, all seems lost as the worlds merge. In a last attempt to save Creation, the Justice League manages to send one man through to the next world. But can he save them all?
1. From Endings, Beginnings

**The Last Son of Tomorrow**

**Prologue: From Endings, Beginnings**

"This would be easier if you just let me carry you."

"Just between you and me? I hate it when you do that. Besides, I'm fine."

Clark glanced at the younger hero whose arm was slung over his shoulder, and whose mask hid an agonized grimace. His expression was blank, and Terry knew without even asking that he'd looked him over with his X-ray Vision. He could tell from the pain that he didn't see anything good, either.

But the Man of Steel had been dealing with the unhealthily stubborn Bat Clan for years and had long since learned that it was easier to beg forgiveness then ask permission. In a blur of superspeed—which nonetheless gave Terry time to feel embarrassed—Terry found himself in a chair in the middle of the Bat Cave. By the Bat Computer, Bruce was typing away quickly at something he could not see, but Ace shown for his absence.

He glared up at the leader of the Justice League.

"I expect stubbornness like this from Bruce, but you're usually mature enough to accept help, Terry." Superman said. In another situation, he might have had an amused look on his face.

But today, there was no laughter on Clark Kent's face. There wasn't much laughter anywhere.

"I told you I could have made it back here on my own. You should be out there helping everyone else, not helping me hobble back here. We may have won, but there's no shortage of people who are injured."

"I asked him to bring you here." Bruce interrupted, sitting in front of the Bat-computer. His fingers danced across its keyboard with more speed then Terry had ever seen, opening and closing windows as fast as he could and download bars were appearing and filling just as quickly. Hooked up to the powerful computer were a number of portable hard drives. They weren't small ones, either; there could have been petabytes of data on those things, maybe even exabytes.

Bruce was storing everything he could find, Terry realized, but it only served to make him more confused.

"What's going on, Bruce? There are a lot of people that need help," he said, a hint reproachfully. The fresh memories of the Quardian Invasions and the destruction they'd wrecked on the many Earths hadn't faded in the slightest, even after their counterstrikes had begun. "Maybe more people than have ever needed help before."

"The Anti-Monitor is dead," Bruce said, though his voice held no joy. The former Batman had been forced to stay largely out of the conflict, even as so many people died all around him—Terry could barely even imagine what that must have felt like. Perhaps it had been a bit like he'd felt when he'd had to pull his mentor out of his Exosuit when he'd joined a battle to save his life. "But we're not in the clear yet. That final battle…"

Terry looked down. He didn't need to be reminded—anyone who was there would never be able to forget it. But it still wasn't over? What could possibly be happening—

Realization struck like a lightning bolt, but it was several times as painful.

"Don't tell me…" He said, shaking his head in denial. It couldn't be. Everything they'd done…all the people that had died…it couldn't all have been for _nothing_.

"The worlds are merging. I can't say how it'll happen or what the results will be, but they are and we just have to accept that." Bruce said, as blunt as ever. "We don't have much time so we need to work fast. Where is everyone else, Kent?"

"They're on their way," Superman replied. "Rex and Kai-ro are close by, they're just waiting for Richard and Virgil."

"What's the plan?" Terry said, shelving his despair before it could even begin to take root. Of course there was a plan; Bruce always had a plan. And so long as they had one, there still hope, which meant it was way too early to give up. "What do you need me to do?"

"Do you still have Barda's Mother Box?" Bruce asked.

"Of course," Terry said, a hand going to his belt. "I'd never leave home without it; she gave it to me right before…"

"Energy cannot be created or destroyed." Bruce said, interrupting his painful memories. "The Anti-Monitor might have been able to destroy Universes, but that energy still exists. Even with the worlds merging, that energy will have to go somewhere. If it can be found, then it's not too late to save everyone."

"So we need to find it? Any idea where to start looking? We haven't exactly got a lot of time here."

"We don't have anywhere near enough time," Superman corrected. "We won't be able to find it before the world's merge."

"Then—"

"So we aren't going to bother trying," Bruce said. "We just need to get someone through to the other side. If we can just keep someone who knows what happened from being rewritten, then we still have a chance."

And by someone, they meant him.

"And what about all of you?" He asked, his voice rough. He already knew the answer.

"We don't matter," The former Batman snorted. "If we can get you through, it doesn't matter if every last one of us dies. You could save trillions upon trillions of lives. There isn't a member of the Justice League that wouldn't give their lives for that."

"Besides," Superman said. "Don't write us off yet. We all believe in you Terry, and if our lives are in your hands, none of us are worried."

Warhawk and Green Lantern swept into the room, Static and Gear close behind. Rex had an ugly looking gash across the left side of his stomach, three red lines on the left side of his face, and deep bags under his eyes from too many sleepless nights. Terry was glad he couldn't see his friends back, however, or the marks that had been left when a group of the Anti-Monitor's Thunderers had managed to tear his artificial wings away and strike at the vulnerable flesh beneath. He'd had to carry his friend to safety and had come out pretty badly in that fight himself, but he at least had Mother Box.

Kai-ro had removed the bandages from around his head, revealing the claw marks of whatever Shadow Demon had managed to get past his shield. The beast had tried to tear the calm Green Lantern's head clear off and had, from what Superman had said, paid for his foolishness. Beneath the Green Lantern's self-repairing costume, Terry couldn't see sign of any other wounds, but this was the first time he'd ever seen Kai-ro look really, genuinely tired, which was more than enough to make him worry for his friend.

Static and Gear had made it out of things with their fair share of scars to show for it, but carried themselves like it was nothing. Terry knew about the burns and bandages they hid easily beneath their costumes, but had spoken to them in private. The two older heroes must have been tired, but they didn't let it show, proving what they said about those that lived to old age in a profession where most die young.

Really, Terry wasn't sure why Clark had bothered worrying about him. As soon as Mother Box had a chance to fix him up, he'd be fine, and he'd come from the battle with the least physical injuries after the Man of Steel. But then, Superman's injures had been a bit deeper then the flesh, so Terry was probably the best off, period.

Gear squinted, eyes turning immediately to the Batmobile.

"Did you already make the modifications?" He asked Bruce.

"As much as I was able, but we still have some time. Just work fast."

"Already on it." Richie said, moving towards it, the legs of his backpack extending. "Guys, help me out."

Superman, Static, and Kai-ro immediately began moving materials and disassembling the Batmobile according to his instructions, quickly taking pieces of it apart and putting them back together.

Terry nodded, shoulder's tight.

"What's wrong?" Virgil asked, floating over to look at him. "You're getting nervous over something as small as jumping past the end of the Universe? For shame, Batman—_for shame_."

Terry tried to smile at the older man's jokes, but he couldn't.

"I get that one of us has to go through…but why is it me? Why aren't one of you sitting in this seat?"

"We're hedging our bets," Warhawk said. "I think it goes without saying that none of us have ever done this before."

"Huh?"

"Long story short," Richie began. "We're breaking out all the stops to be sure this works. The stuff I added to the Batmobile _should_ help it get through in one piece, but it's obviously untested. So we're going in with you. Hopefully, if something goes wrong, I'll be able to fix it before I'm wiped from existence or something. Static and GL here will be putting up additional shields around the Batmobile and Supes is going to help push it into the next Universe."

"Guys…if you do that, then you'll all…" Terry had known this was going to happen, but he still had to drop his gaze. Suddenly, it was unbearable to meet their eyes.

"Die? Disappear? Vanish?" Virgil asked. "Maybe. But we'll get you through, even if we do. It's gonna be tough on you, too, but you have to keep driving, no matter what you see happening to us."

Terry worked his jaw and nodded once.

"All of you…I'm not good with speeches and I know, but…It was a pleasure and an honor to be able to work with all of you," Terry said, secure that his mask would hide any tears he couldn't stop. "The thing about this that's going to hurt the most is that this new world might never know about all the heroes that fought until the end to help save lives. But I promise that at the very least, _I_ won't forget."

"Man, don't start getting solemn and depressed on us." Richie sighed.

"None of us think of this as goodbye," Kai-ro said.

He looked around him at the others, and they each showed their assent.

He looked back at Terry, eyes bright. "We know you are too stubborn to ever give up. So go save the Multiverse."

He was seized with the sudden impulse to get up. Terry hauled himself onto his feet, pushing through the aches and pains that flared with the motion. He found the pain meaningless, and stood tall and prideful before his team. There was so little room for sentimental words in the Justice League. He wanted to make this woefully inadequate, but true, gesture. He wanted to stand as equals with them in their last moments.

They understood and accepted what was needed of them. It was time he embraced what was needed of the Tomorrow Knight.

On his own, he moved to the Batmobile, opening it was a hiss of released air. In the back seat, Ace laid among the few belongings he kept inside it, head between his paws. From his dropped ears and expressive eyes, Terry couldn't help but feel he knew exactly what was about to happen.

"Thank you." He said, climbing inside. "All of you. For everything you've done. But I'll take things from here, guys. What do you need me to do, Bruce?"

"Open a Boom Tube when I give the signal and then drive as fast as you can." His Mentor replied.

The computer sounded as the last of the data finished loading into the hard drives and a moment later Superman deposited them in Terry's lap.

"This is everything we could get that looked like it could be even remotely useful. And I mean _everything_." He said. "We have no way of knowing what things will be like on the other side, but _something_ in there should help."

Terry gave a nod and the hatch of the Batmobile slid closed with a hiss. Inside, Terry lifted a hand to the communicator by his ear.

"I won't think of this as goodbye…but I want to say that I…Bruce, I want you to know that I consider you a father. You took a kid like me and made a good man out of him. I just want to thank you for that."

Bruce silently listened to Terry's voice through the communicator in his own ear. No one in the room but Superman could hear it, which was how he preferred it and was probably why Terry had done it.

Unlike Terry, his features and expression were in plain sight. It was hard to keep the stoniness, but he did.

_It's a lot easier with a mask, isn't it Terry…,_ Bruce thought. _And you are worthy of that mask._

"'For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you…my only son.' That's how it went…right?" Bruce murmured back before raising his voice. "Everyone, in position. It's almost time."

"You ready, Mother Box?" Terry asked, fingers tight around the handles. He received a simple 'ping' in response and took a deep breath in response.

Outside, Bruce began the countdown, staring up at the computer screen intently.

"Our window is going to open in five…four…three…two…one…now!"

Before them, a hole appeared in space and time, punctured by the will of a machine.

As Mother Box opened the Boom Tube instantly and Terry floored the gas. He reached max speed almost before he entered it and that was before Superman grabbed it and helped push. Warhawk stood on top of the Batmobile, bracing himself against the speed with his Nth Metal wings. The strange material was known for interacting in unusual ways with pretty much everything and Terry could only assume that they planned to use it to aid the transport. A moment later, Gear activated some kind of machine and Rex relaxed, standing without any trouble. Outside, Kai-ro and Virgil had already raised their shields around the car.

This was it.

Traveling through a Boom Tube was a strange experience at the best of times. The portals allowed for extra-dimensional point-to-point travel, but he wasn't completely sure how they worked— and as far as he knew, he was the only human to ever be given permanent ownership of one, and that was just as things had gone to hell, so there hadn't been a lot of time to figure things out. There were many names for it—the Electron Road, the Matter Threshold—but it was the same thing either way. A bridge like Bifrost, connecting two points, but for as simple an explanation as that was, it was hard to describe what it looked like. At its base, it was a tunnel through the fourth dimension, but that was much more complex than it might sound. A two dimension square was simple, with each corner connecting two edges. A three dimensional cube was slightly more complex, with three edges. But with four edges, the result is a much more complex shape—even more so, considering what the fourth dimension was. Instead, it was simpler to describe how it was in normal space; there was always a deafening boom, a quick trip through…where ever the Mother Box took him through, and he was at his destination.

The place it took him through was strange beyond words, but it was over so quickly, that it usually didn't matter. Confusing shapes mean nothing if they flash past to quickly to be seen.

Except this time. This time, it was different. The trip that usually passed instantly was drawn out greatly and they were speeding through a tube that didn't seem to have any exit or end.

It wasn't hard to figure out why. The Boom Tube connected two existing points, but they were trying to connect two points that couldn't exist alongside each other. When the old Universe existed, the new one wouldn't have been formed yet and when the new one did, the old Universe would no longer exist.

They had no destination.

Terry tapped his communicator again, ignoring Ace's whimpering. He didn't know what this was like through the senses of a dog, but it was flat-out weird for him, so it probably wasn't pleasant for Ace. But there really wasn't anything he could do about.

"Gear, how are we going to get somewhere that doesn't exist?"

"It will exist, Terry. The Universe is being rewritten, remember? We'll be coming across one soon enough."

"One what?"

Gear seemed to ponder something for a moment.

"…Think of them as ripples in a pond—each ripple is going to sweep over everything and remake it. Nobody in normal space-time will even be able to notice it, but in this Boom Tube, we should be able to see them coming."

"But won't we be rewritten, too?"

"Only if it touches you."

"We're coming up on one now." Superman said, interrupting their conversation. "Terry, get ready to open another Boom Tube when Richard gives you the signal."

"A Boom Tube within a Boom Tube?"

"We have to go deeper, man," Gear said, smiling. "The Mother Box opens a portal into Fourth Dimensional Space to connect two points through a tube. We contacted the New Gods to ask for their knowledge on the subject and they said that if one could stay in a Boom Tube for more than an instant and you found the right place to do so, a Mother Box should be able to open a portal into even higher dimensions. We have to get high enough to just skirt around the edges of the change if we want to get you through this. Fifth dimension, at least, but maybe even the Sixth or Seventh. Then we'll all try and get you through the weakest parts of the change."

Terry opened his mouth before shutting it. Now wasn't the time to ask for answers that he probably wouldn't understand.

"Just tell me when," He said, squinting up ahead instead.

In the distance, Terry thought he could see something very, very bright.

"I'm relaying the instructions to your suit, now." Gear said. "Just open a Boom Tube and it'll do all the work. Get ready, because we're coming up on a dimensional weak point…now."

Another Boom Tube opened on the side of the 'lane' they were on and Terry's suit moved on autopilot, turning off the 'road' they were on to enter Fifth Dimensional Space.

"Try to avoid any Imps, Terry," Superman said. "The last thing we need is Mr. Mxyzptlk interfering."

"I'll try, but I can barely see where I'm going." Terry said, looking at a tube that had height, width, depth, and a couple of other things. "Gear, what's going on. My eyes are…"

"Looking at five dimensional things with five dimensional colors and shapes. I know. Supes, you still got this?"

"I've been to the Fifth Dimension before," Clark replied. "It's not a problem."

Gear sighed.

"My only regret is that I can't see if I can correctly model the curvature of Spacetime in Fifth Dimensional space or try to unify gravity with the electromagnetic force. Oh well; we probably wouldn't have time for that anyway. Can you still see the changes coming, Clark? I can still detect dimensional weak points, but I'm having trouble determining if we need to go higher. A lot of my scanners are getting weird readings."

"Its…dimmer. Farther away. But it's still pretty strong. I'm not sure Terry would make it through that in one piece."

"Got it. Sixth dimension, here we come. Terry, open another Tube in three, two, one."

Curving straight up into another Boom Tube, Terry grimaced and had to shut his eyes for a moment as what he saw—or tried to see—hurt his eyes. Ace's whimpering had begun to shift into angry growls, but the dog hid his head under something as well, muffling the noise.

"Damn it," He head Gear curse. "Something is definitely interfering with my tech. My scanners aren't picking up anything. We'll have to punch through here. Superman, can you see anything?"

"I…think so. Kai-ro, thirty seconds until impact."

Terry risked opening his eyes, activating a filter to protect them from the bright light. He saw Kai-ro nod and the bright green backpack he was wearing dissolved, revealing a Green Lantern Power Battery. Pressing his ring against it, Kai-ro solemnly began to recite the oath.

"In brightest day, in blackest night,  
>No evil shall escape my sight<br>Let those who worship evil's might,  
>Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"<p>

The shield around the car brightened and they began to pick up the pace, speeding quickly towards a danger they could not see—and so they could do nothing but wait for impact.

And impact they did. The car shook enough that Terry worried it might fall apart even as he was thrown forward in his seat and Ace let out a startled yelp as he was jostled around unpleasantly. Terry had to grit his teeth to keep from biting his own tongue as his entire body shook. He pushed his thrusters to the limit, trying to make some headway, but it was like trying to swim up a waterfall. He felt Superman push as hard as he could and worried that the Batmobile might not be able to take it—

But the shields did not fall. They stood against a force that was changing all of existence and while they couldn't move past it, they weren't wiped away instantly either. For a long moment, they stalemated that force.

Then, Kai-ro spoke.

"It's been an honor," He said. "I'll see all of you later."

The ring on his finger glowed bright—brighter than any of them had ever seen it before—and cried out in warning.

**Warning Kai-ro of Space Sector 2814: Willpower limit reached! Willpower limit exceeded!**

There was an explosion of bright green and suddenly the car jerked forward, against the changing world, breaking through. It didn't stop there, either, but continued to move forward, inch by inch, as everyone pushed it to continue on. Superman's hands left dents on the car as he pushed as hard as he dared and it would have broken to pieces if Static hadn't shielded it against him as well.

As the light of Kai-ro's sacrifice faded, Warhawk moved to the forefront of the car, his Nth-Metal Wings put together in a shield before him and the force seemed to change upon the ship, even as the wings began to crack under the force as they slide further into the next Universe. Rex held them up valiantly, pushing his strength-enhancing armor to its limits as he kept them upright against the storm of power that would end their world. They inched forward with him shielding them, for an unbelievable moment follow by another. The Nth-Metal held up, impossibly, for five more seconds, before it broke under the weight of the new Universe.

"May you fly safely home." Rex recited in Thanagarian, a 'prayer' for safety between fellow warriors.

The barriers of Kai-ro and Rex fell, but a new one immediately stood up in their place. The power Static had gathered around the ship and the energy of the Sixth Dimension itself began to funnel into a device in Gear's hands, raising a final shield against the storm.

"Terry, listen to me," Gear spoke. "There's not much choice, now. You're going to have to make the jump into the Seventh Dimension."

"I thought I needed a weak point for that?" Terry replied through shaking, gritted teeth. "Are your scanner's working?"

"No, so we're just gonna have to make you one instead." Richie said, his backpack removing itself. "As soon as this shield falls, open another Boom Tube and go."

The backpack attached itself to the device Gear held, its mechanical armors working quickly to make adjustments. As it finished integrating it, Static lifted it, moving it to the edge of the barrier it created, even as their final shield began to crack.

Gear pressed a button and it exploded, even as another Boom Tube opened.

Terry closed his eyes, both against the seven-dimensional brightness before him, and to keep from having to see Richie's and Virgil's unprotected forms disappear.

But that didn't keep him from hearing Clark scream as he continued to push the Batmobile forward with no protection but his Kryptonian Heritage. He sat in the dark, afraid of opening his eyes and losing them, and he could do nothing but listen to Superman scream and the Batmobile rattle and groan.

And then, in an instant, the screaming stopped, as did the force upon the Batmobile.

"Mother Box?" He asked after a moment of silence. "Are we through?"

The Mother Box pinged an affirmative and Terry took a deep breath.

"Take us back down."

**XxXXxX**

While the trip up to the Seventh Dimension had been slow, relatively, with entire seconds between jumps, the trip back down was bone-shakingly, heart-poundingly fast. He exited one Boom Tube after another and careened back into normal spacetime in less than a second.

Turning down the thrusters, Terry stepped hard on the brakes even as he quickly glanced around for anything he'd need to avoid hitting—but was pleased to find nothing but a clear blue sky. Pulling up as he slowed down, he stopped the car and took a look at the new world he'd made his way into.

Beneath the blue skies were small forests and green pastures. Startled by his sudden entrance, a flock of birds had taken flight, which, together with the plants, confirmed that there was life on this world, which he was kind of hoping was Earth. Almost as relieving was the sight of the black pavement of highways crisscrossing the land.

Not only was there life, there was intelligent life. And hopefully human life, at that.

Setting his car into camouflage mode just in case, he turned to the easiest way to figure things out and turned on the radio. Immediately, a singing, definitely human voice filled his car with some country song, he guessed. Pleased that it had worked, he began fiddling with one of the knobs, quickly scrolling through the stations. He switched through four more music stations, a sports station narrating what he assumed was a football game, and then found a news station giving the weather, before stopping, satisfied that he was probably on Earth.

Even better, he wasn't stuck in the ancient past with the dinosaurs, either. From what little he remembered about the radio, and assuming technology had advanced at a roughly similar pace in this Universe he was probably no earlier than 1900, because the radio became common somewhere around then. Chances were, he was probably closer to his time then that, based on the number and type of stations.

Actually, that gave him an idea and he turned on his GPS to see if it would work.

It did, narrowing down the time frame even further. After a few seconds, it determined that he was somewhere in—or rather, over—the state of New York, which put him near both Metropolis and Gotham…if they existed at least.

"That was easy enough," Terry murmured, staring at the screen.

After a moment of deliberation, he decided to try and head towards Metropolis first. He made a habit of not lying to himself so he didn't think for a moment that it was anything but what it was—he wanted to delay seeing what Gotham was like, if just for a little bit longer. More than that, he wanted to delay seeing Bruce and potentially finding out that he'd never been born. Or was killed. Or, hell, was evil.

God, if the Joker was the good guy in this reality, he wasn't sure he'd be able to take it.

So he'd check on Metropolis first. It was a big enough place that he should be able to notice if anything was obviously wrong and it's be easy enough to check up on what's happened to Superman from there and then the other heroes. If this world had heroes.

Terry shook himself. He could think up possibilities for this world until his head exploded, but there was really only one way to find out. He'd just have to hope Superman's parents hadn't misaimed and shot him to Apokolips or something.

"Mother Box, can you open another Boom Tube for me? I need to go to Metropolis."

With its usual ping, the Electron Road opened before him and the disguised Batmobile was off, leaving nothing behind but the echoing roar of its engines.

**XxXXxX**

Terry landed his car quietly on the roof of a building and reached into the space behind his seat by Ace. The now much calmer, yet still saddened dog shifted out of the way silently, letting him quickly reach what he was looking for; the small bag he always left there, in which he kept several items that were pretty much required in his line of work, including an advanced first aid kit and his civilian clothes, along with everything Bruce had given him before he left. He pet Ace awkwardly, unsure of how to provide comfort for something like this to a dog, but he hadn't been the only one to lose people in their transit. Ace had known Bruce even longer then he had. Part of him wondered if Bruce had sent Ace with him for him to look after, or if he'd entrusted Ace with looking after him.

Scratching him behind the ears one more time, he left Ace to guard the car and glided down into the alley by the building, where he changed quickly and stored his costume in the backpack he kept his change of clothes in. Sliding into it, he walked out into Metropolis.

As he'd noticed before parking, he was right; everyone was human. There hadn't been any strange mutations or curses that had turned the population into vampire werewolves or anything, which was nice. The Earth hadn't been conquered by demons, aliens, or madmen, either, which was even better. He'd gotten more than enough of that kind of weirdness when they were fighting the Anti-Monitor. On the downside, there weren't any flying cars, either, so he was probably in the past.

He pondered what to do next, but just for a moment. He could either go check on Clark personally, which could be troublesome, whether he wanted to talk to the reporter or the Superhero. He suddenly realized that he had no idea where Clark had lived before his slow aging process had required him to subtly move. He could check the Fortress of Solitude instead, but Superman might not be in there and a random stranger wouldn't be welcome besides.

But all of that was much more complicated then the second option, so instead he walked to the Metropolis Library and asked the lady at the deck if she could direct him towards any books about Superman.


	2. Stranger in a Strange Land

**The Last Son of Tomorrow**

**Stranger in a Strange Land**

Terry was pleased to learn that not only did Superman exist, but that he wasn't evil. The same was true of most of the heroes he knew or had heard of. As near as he could tell, there wasn't anyone good or evil that he wasn't used to being that way, which simplified things. Feeling relieved, he decided to check up on Batman as well, and while there were a number of things shrouded in mystery about the Dark Knight—which he knew was probably the way Bruce liked it—he was a publicly recognized figure as a member of the Justice League.

Terry pondered the Justice League for a moment. What he'd learned was a bit interesting, but it didn't really strike him as particularly good or bad. The Justice League had been founded by Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, a Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter. The founding Green Lantern definitely wasn't Rex's father and Hawkwoman wasn't among them, but both Mr. Stewart and Sheyera—who almost certainly wasn't Mrs. Stewart, given the presence of Hawkman with her pretty much all the time—had joined later. The League had gone public only recently and added a few new members, which probably meant they'd been hidden for quite awhile.

He imagined Bruce approved of that kind of caution.

But for all the minor differences, Terry just had to shrug. They worked together and saved the day, so minor changes didn't evoke any particular feelings from him after seeing a heroic Lex Luthor during the crisis. In fact, he was pretty numb to weirdness after what he saw during that time.

Closing the book about the History of Heroes that he'd skimmed and set it besides the newspaper he'd found detailing the Justice League's coming out. He'd gathered a number of books, mainly ones about specific teams or heroes, but also several that complained about the effects of Superheroes, just to make sure there weren't any horrible crimes he needed to be aware off. All told, he'd been in the library for a few hours.

Mother Box had long sinse fixed his broken ribs, but he was starting to get a bit hungry. With the conflict and the rush into a new Universe, he had mainly subsisted on anything he could eat quickly for…several weeks, actually and it was getting harder to ignore, even with Mother Box's help. Mother Box would need some time to recharge soon too, since he'd been pushing her hard.

Recharging Mother Box wasn't a problem, since he could just plug her into the city's power grid and let her leech off of it until she was at full power. He, on the other hand, had no money and would need to figure out a way of getting some before long.

But for now, it wasn't an issue. With Mother Box's support, he'd be fine pretty much indefinitely, though it would leech at her power supplies. And if he couldn't find anything to eat for free, he could just travel into the wilderness and go hunting or find some apple trees.

But thinking about things like that caused Terry's thoughts to drift towards his next course of action.

"What do you think, Mother Box? Should I contact them?" He asked.

Contacting Bruce and Clark would be simple enough to do. He could get to Wayne Manor easily and contacting Clark would probably be as simple as turning on the signal he'd given him. Superman wouldn't be able to help but hear the sound and he'd probably come looking. Even if, for some reason, that didn't work, he could just carve a giant bat or 'S' into some roof to get his attention, or a Kryptonian message. Then he'd just have to sit and wait for him to see, which would only be a matter of time.

They'd be suspicious, of course, but he could work with that; he'd be suspicious in that situation, too. Getting them to believe he was a time-traveling man from another Multiverse here to save infinite Worlds by restarting them with the power left behind by some malicious, genocidal, extradimensional Superbeing might be a little bit hard, but he might be able to prove that too, with all the data he had with him.

He wanted to see the old men again, even if they probably weren't old in this time period and didn't know or trust him.

And yet, he needed to really think about this. These were his first steps in this World and he had to make sure his choices were the right ones. Now that he'd had time to sit and think instead of just rushing from conflict to conflict, things were starting to settle in. It was like a heavy weight that was settling over him and he, quite frankly, found it more than a bit scary.

It was not an exaggeration to say that the fates of infinite worlds—and more importantly, infinite lives—depended on his success. If he failed, they'd more then just die; they would never have existed in the first place. Everything he'd ever known or loved would be gone and no one would mourn.

_Wow_. No pressure or anything.

Mother Box pinged in concern, but he just shook his head.

"I know. This is really important, but I can't let the pressure get to me. I just have to do everything I can." He said resolvedly. He was Batman; he acknowledged danger, fear, and pressure, but he didn't let them slow him down. "Still, should I call in the cavalry?"

Mother Box was silent for a moment, before giving off a suggestive ping that only its owner could really interpret.

Terry paused, lifting his eyes to the ceiling contemplatively.

"You know," He began. "Bruce probably _does_ have an 'In Case the Universe Ends' plan—or else came up with one when it started to. Think it's on one of the Hard Drives?"

She pinged again.

"Of course it would be; what am I saying? If he had it, he would have sent it with me. Let's go check it out."

**XxXXxX**

Using the Batmobile's on board computer, Terry checked the first of the hard drives, thankfully marked such. Even with the end of the Universe impending, Bruce had been organized. All the files were sorted neatly into carefully marked folders. The very first file stood out, brought to the top by an asterisk before and after the name. It was titled 'The Plan.'

"I knew betting on Bruce's paranoia would never let us down," He told Mother Box. It beeped back at him. "I am, I am; just give me a second."

Opening the folder, he looked quickly through the short list of files before clicking on the top one again, marked Warning between another pair of asterisks.

Bruce's face quickly appeared on the screen.

"Terry," He began bluntly. "That you're hearing this must mean that you survived the transit in one piece. I hope you found this message quickly. Listen to this entire message and then read the other files in this folder thoroughly before acting, because this is important. There are a number of things I need and want to tell you, but we haven't much time. I know I don't have to tell you to be careful of whom you trust—so I'm just going to tell you not to trust anyone."

Terry blinked slowly and tried to be surprised, but there were things even Batman wasn't capable of.

"I know you're thinking that I'm paranoid, which I freely admit that I am, but being paranoid in our business is the same as being smart. I know you realize how important this mission is and I know how hard this will be for you, but you need to be extremely cautious of whom you involve—especially the Justice League or any equivalent, if they exist. There are few people I'd trust with the fate of the world, but none of them are present so I will admit that they, my Justice League, make up the majority of the list, just as I know you feel the same about yours, but I didn't always share things with them and there's a reason for that which has nothing to do with how trust worthy they are or are not. The League has enemies watching it, as does every team of heroes, and secrets stop being secret once they're spread throughout a group."

Bruce looked at him flatly through the screen.

"What you're looking for is the combined power of countless Universes—and anyone who laid claim to that power could call themselves God and it would be a reasonably accurate assessment of their capabilities. If the League is seen moving, people are going to wonder why. People like Lex Luthor and Darkseid. The power you're after is enough to make any of their wildest dreams into a living nightmare for everyone else. The League had thousands of enemies that would wage war over something like this and entire governments and worlds that probably would as well, not to mention the possibilities of mind reading and control; I don't need to remind you of Starro. Whether it is the League or something else, if you seek help on this from any of them, you involve their enemies in this as well and complicate things immensely. The existence of a source of power such as this is needed to know information and no one needs to know. The fates of many Universes depend on this; don't involve people in it lightly. If it becomes necessary, you can ask for help later, but so long as it's not, do everything you can to keep anyone from learning of this."

Terry exhaled abruptly. He could see Bruce's point; after what the Anti-Monitor had done, it was impossible not to. The last thing he needed while saving the world was half the Universe duking it out for the prize, which was a scarily real possibility with a prize like this. But at the same time, it meant doing this all by himself and…he didn't want to admit it but wasn't even sure where to begin, much less whether he would be able to do it alone.

"For that reason among others, the information contained on these hard drives is dangerous beyond words. Some of the things within them people would destroy worlds for. I sent these with you, to help you in any way I can, but you cannot let these fall into the wrong hands. There are corners of the Universe that are full of dangerous and horrifying things, places where most people wouldn't dare look and there are Sectors of Space the Green Lanterns don't know about; I know, because I've been to more than a few of them and I left you a list. When you aren't using these hard drives, use the Mother Box to hide them in the furthest regions of space where no one can find them but you. For what it's worth…I'm sorry that I have to make you do this alone but I've included everything I thought could help in these files; look at them carefully. Good luck, Terry; I'll see you when you get back."

Terry took a deep breath before snorting as he realized something. Bruce hadn't questioned whether he could do this or not; he'd just been rueful of putting him in such danger.

"Okay, Bruce," He said, closing the finished video. "What did you leave for me? If I'm gonna do this alone, I'm gonna need all the help you can give me."

**XxXXxX**

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Terry was familiar with the phrase and yet he still had to shake his head in amusement as he walked back to his car. His second day in this new reality had been spent…serving fast food.

Flipping burgers to save the world, he thought to himself. Well, not that he was actually flipping burgers yet.

Looking through Bruce's plans, he came back to the same problem he had thought about earlier—he was going to need some money. Getting it wasn't hard, especially when one could get around as easily as he could, but he still needed to get it and working at a fast food restaurant was the easiest way to get it, for now. He managed to get himself a fake ID and enough information to keep it from falling apart on a cursory inspection, but he didn't want to work anywhere that would stare at him too long until he got a chance to make a more convincing one.

But the work was easy, for him, though it was a bit boring and repetitive. And even minimum wage racked up fairly fast when you didn't need to spend it on anything. He slept in his car, which didn't need gasoline. He'd had some time to charge Mother Box so he didn't need to eat. At some point, he'd like to get some new clothes or take a shower, but Mother Box took care of that, too. Since he was used to long hours anyway and had nothing to do and nowhere to go at the moment, he started early in the mornings and finished late at night and didn't have any problems doing so.

Besides, it's only temporary. He just needed some money to buy a few things was all.

Bruce's hard drives contained many, many details about a variety of inventions and not just the ones that had been built by Wayne-Powers. He had the schematics and, more importantly, he was pretty sure he could build them.

Not all of them, of course—there were a lot that would be impossible to make without specialized parts and machinery—but definitely some and that was enough for now. Bruce had known he was going to enter this world with nothing but the clothes on his back, just as he'd known that if Terry wanted to save the world, he was going to need a lot more than that, which had been why he'd included those designs.

He could build a few futuristic machines now, fall back on Bruce's notes on the business world and the lessons he'd given him before the Crisis had interrupted, and make plenty of money off of them. He wasn't a Metahuman—if he was going to save the universe, he was going to need tech, equipment, knowledge, and every other advantage he could get.

More than that, he was going to need to know where to start looking. Mother Box could take him anywhere he wanted to go, but the Universe was a huge place and he had no idea where to find what he was looking for—he didn't even deserve to be compared to a speck of dust against the immensity of the Universe.

Searching randomly would get him nowhere. He'd die of old age long before he could finish checking Sectored Space alone if he had to search city by city or even planet by planet. Worse than that, he had to assume it wasn't anywhere obvious or someone probably would have noticed the presence of such an unbelievable amount of energy.

Even Bruce couldn't tell him where to look.

But he could help him _try _to find it. In what little time he'd had at the end, Bruce had called up the greatest minds left after the Qwardians were through with their Earth and gathered them together on a single project—an altered version of the technology they'd used to defend the Earth's from the Anti-Monitors. This time, rather than a massive array of connected, inter-dimensional satellites, it would only exist in one; but it served the same purpose. To gather information without being noticed, allowing the Earths to both plan and defend against attacks, even on inter-dimensional scales.

An array of satellite's scanning massive regions of space for any hints of what he was looking for…The OMAC Satellites had been a turning point in the war against the Anti-Monitor's forces and had played an important role in defeating them. Perhaps they'd help undo the destruction they'd caused as well.

But it would have to wait for now, since he didn't have anywhere near the resources he'd need for such an ambitious project, much less the power to build such a thing without the wrong people noticing and getting suspicious. He didn't have what he needed, yet. It would have been easier to try and convince this world's Bruce Wayne to do it, but someone was always watching Wayne Enterprises; a lot of things changed with time, but that wasn't one of them. Whether it was the press, enemy corporations, villains that wanted Wayne Enterprises money or technology, there was someone watching. Bruce had managed, somehow, to slip the materials needed to make the Watchtower through the cracks in his budget, but he didn't think even the original Batman could get thousands of satellites into space without anyone noticing. He still wasn't sure how _he_ was going to do that.

But he had to, so for now he'd play the hard working teenager and bide his time. He could do that—considering what was at stake, he could do just about anything.

He just had to hope, as he tried to make himself comfortable in the seat of the Batmobile with Ace on his lap, that he didn't do the _wrong_ thing.

**XxXXxX**

A part of Terry wondered if maybe he should have spent some money to buy himself a suit, because, while he'd left his jacket in his car, it didn't change the fact that he was still dressed a bit oddly for this time period. Not enough to really startle people, but enough to draw attention.

On the other hand, perhaps that was for the best.

Attention was what he was trying to get, today.

Terry had spent some time debating on what he should do first. He knew from the beginning that he couldn't break out the flying cars, even if he had the money to afford to. Something like that would immediately garner a huge amount of questions and both the manufacturers and the scientific community would go over both his designs and his background with a fine tooth comb, picking out every little inconsistency. At the same time, his design would probably get picked up pretty quickly by a company and others would want to get their hands on the designs, too, which would get complicated very, very fast. One way or another, he'd make a quick rise to fame and a lot of enemies.

And yet, he was going to get that result eventually, no matter what he did. There was a reason Bruce had told him to not let anyone find out about his plans and intentions, rather than about him period—the latter simply wasn't going to be possible. If he went around producing futuristic inventions, people were going to notice and questions were going to arise; there was really no way around that.

It didn't mean he couldn't hide anything, though—both Bruce and Derek Powers had proven you could have secrets, even when all the eyes in the world were on you—but it did mean he would have to hide them well.

For his first two weeks in this world, Terry ran around, meticulously piecing together his background in this world. People would start looking at it closely soon and he had to make sure they didn't find anything that couldn't be explained away. He had to use both his suit and Mother Box to slide into a variety of databases and physical records, filling out forms and information without anyone noticing. He had to get the specific type of birth certificate used in New Jersey and detail how his parents died, leaving him alone at a legal age to keep from making any inconsistencies in the details of orphanages and foster homes and decrease the number of people who'd recognize him, take another driving test to get his license after modifying the records to say that, yes, he'd gotten a permit, waited the correct amount of time, and done the required hours of driving. He had to fill out medical records, dental records, grades, insurance files, alter taxes to reflect his existence, and fill out the dozen other links in the paper trail every one left simply by being alive, and fill out his school records as being Home Schooled to minimize the numbers of people who'd be suspicious if they didn't recognize him.

For the same reason, he didn't have any sports teams, extra-curricular clubs, jobs, or awards in his background—and he also didn't create any flying cars after appearing out of nowhere.

Such an invention—and one that would be fairly easy to make widespread once the proper infrastructure was in place—would raise too many questions. Where did the technology come from? How did he come up with it? How did he test it? Where did he learn enough _to_ make them, as a teenager?

Lex Luthor could get away with a lot of outlandish breakthroughs and inventions on credit alone, but Terry couldn't. Not yet, at least. People would question it too much and it would take time to make absolutely sure the background he'd crafted for himself would really hold up under scrutiny. If he was going to do this, he was going to have to do it right, which meant starting slowly and making a name for himself. It had taken him a while to decide what to do, but at the beginning of the second week, he'd written a report based off one that had been written years ago in his reality, clearly recounting exact details and results, making notes and detailing side-effects, filling it out as he was expected to and then sending it to a carefully selected business as Bruce had instructed.

He knew they'd be interested, but it wasn't until a week later that he received a response. And so after two weeks without sleep, doing menial labor from before the sun rose until long after it set and working hard to create a paper trail according to Bruce's specifications during every other moment he had, Terry was about ready to check himself into an insane asylum…

He finally managed to get a meeting with a Medical Company.

Standing in front of the doctors with a small case in his hands, Terry suddenly wasn't sure what to say. He was sure that he'd written a speech for this at some point, but after over three hundred hours without sleep he was struggling to remember what it was. It occurred to him that this was the first time he'd ever done something like this before; act like a businessman without Bruce anywhere nearby, telling him what to do when he wasn't sure.

He realized he was going to have to get used to that feeling, too.

At his side, Mother Box gave a quiet but reassuring beep, urging him to speak. Unwilling to let his nerves get the better of him over something as stupid as public speaking, Terry licked his lips once and swallowed before putting his best smile.

"Thank you all for seeing me," He said. "You all probably know why I asked to meet with you, since I sent you my findings and, well, you let me through the door, so let's get straight to the point."

He opened the case, letting them all see the vials.

"You saw the details in the reports I sent you, but here they are. The cure for Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease."

Clinical testing would take a long time. Documenting everything and proving his findings would take longer. They'd need to run Kaplan-Meier estimators, expectation-maximization algorithms, and a bunch of other things he didn't understand. And then they'd have to navigate the paperwork to make the drug legal, produce it, ensure everyone it was safe, produce it, and distribute it.

It might be years before this investment started paying back and the success of the drug went public.

But he could tell by the gleams in the eyes of the doctors and businessmen in front of him that they were interested in the kid that had walked through their door, and for now that was all that mattered. He had plenty of faster ways to make money—for now, all he needed to do was get the faith and interest of this company. He needed a place he could use to build himself up in this reality and he had it or would before too long.

He looked around him once, at the modest, for Metropolis, building he was in, the headquarters of this company, and knew with a quiet certainty that it was going to be his someday soon.

Nervousness fading quickly, Terry continued to speak, the words he'd planned earlier coming back to him alongside his confidence.

**XxXXxX**

After a moment of sitting in his new chair, Terry allowed himself to relax. In all likelihood, he wouldn't be in it for long, but it would do for now. He was upward bound and he knew it, especially once the implications of the Bio-MEMS he'd showed them had truly had a chance to sink in.

A part of Terry was hoping that the board of directors and the major stockholders, who were mostly the same people, would be impressed with his work enough to consent to a friendly takeover. It would be the ideal solution, for him, allowing him to both save money and avoid making enemies, but he was also prepared to do this the hard way. He'd already begun to acquire stock within the company, devoting a major fraction of his income towards that end. Since he still didn't have a house and he didn't need much in the way of what other people considered necessities, he only had to set aside a portion for funding his creations.

If a hostile takeover became necessary, then he was prepared for that. It would take time, but as he'd managed to negotiate payments in stock into his contract to save the humble company from having to bankrupt itself to pay what a number of his inventions were worth. That had been one of the reasons Bruce had advised him to start with a smaller company, after all—to make taking over easier. A part of him felt bad, but if he hadn't allied himself with the company, a larger corporation would have simply crushed it instead, so it was a small part.

Terry's thoughts were interrupted as the window of his office shook in its frame. He felt the muscles of his back tighten as Metropolis' Man of Steel flew by his building, off to fight robots or aliens or whatever was attacking the City today.

It was something he'd long since gotten used to in his world, with one major difference.

Usually, when Clark did that while he was around, Terry would follow him. After all, they were Superman and Batman, a team that had existed long before even the original Justice League. They'd find whatever it was that was endangering people today, smack it around, and send it packing.

Terry laid down his pencil, suddenly not feeling like writing anymore.

It wasn't that Clark was gone—not just that, at least. The absence of his friend hurt, of course; all the more so since it was impossible to forget it with the seeming omnipresence of his symbol in Metropolis. It was on signs, on the news, in the papers, and even on other people's shirts, constantly reminding him and that _hurt_…

But it wasn't why he turned away from his work, as if he were ashamed of it. And it wasn't why his eyes avoided his backpack where it stood, propped up against the wall.

He hadn't been out as Batman in over three weeks. He hadn't used the suit for what it was supposed to be used for since he'd come to this world. He had his reasons and they were good ones, but that didn't change the facts. If he went out as Batman, someone would notice eventually and probably sooner, rather than later. It would make the news, too, of course, because Batman was a founder of the Justice League, and he'd start attracting all kinds of attention that he didn't want. Bruce would come looking for his imposter for sure, he knew, and the World's Greatest Detective was…exactly what his title said he was. And Clark was a reporter by trade—one that could see through walls at that.

He didn't need that kind of attention. Which meant not going out with a red bat on his chest.

He was Batman. He'd earned the title, made himself worthy of it, and made it mean something.

But he couldn't be Batman. Not right now, when his position was so tenuous. He couldn't go out Superhero-ing at all when his position was so tenuous. It wasn't much of an issue with Superman patrolling the city, he told himself, but that wasn't the issue and he knew it.

He wanted to be out there. He needed to be out there. Superman couldn't be everywhere in metropolis and even if he could there were other cities. There was always someone who needed Batman.

But at the moment, there were an infinite number of people that needed him to shut up, sit down, and get back to building up his company. Right now, they didn't need Batman, they needed Terry McGinnis. It wouldn't always be that way—they'd need Batman, too, eventually. He'd be out there soon enough.

But not just yet.

So Terry unclenched hands that he hadn't realized he'd curled into fists and exhaled slowly, turning back to his work.

Besides, while he could do a lot of good out there, but he could do a lot of good in here, too. The technology and medicine he was creating would save lives and make them better. It wasn't the suit that mattered—it was the man who was in it.

He picked up his pencil and rolled it between his fingers for a moment, trying to recapture his train of thought.

And then Superman spoke behind him.

"Mr. McGinnis, right? Terry McGinnis?"

Terry nearly had a heart-attack right then and there and he only managed to keep from snapping his pencil—or worse, something more drastic—by force of will.

Releasing a shaking breath, Terry turned around. In typical Metropolis fashion, his window double for the entire back wall, giving him a marvelous view of the city. A part of him wondered if that was to be able to watch their resident Superhero, but he shook his head. Metropolis had always been like that, near as he could tell.

He looked at Superman for a long moment, unworried about giving himself away; Superman got stared at all the time. He, however, knew Superman better than most, so his reasons for staring were a bit different. Superman could be sneaky when he wanted and stealthy enough for anyone. He could lie quite well, too, despite what some people thought.

But he usually didn't. He didn't like to lie for the same reason he didn't like to wear masks—how do you trust someone if they don't let you see their face? How do you believe the words of someone who makes a practice of lying to you?

There was a part of Superman—a large part—that was the result of the loving choices and sacrifices of Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van, but just as much was farm boy raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent.

So he looked Superman in the eyes, saw the emotions plain on his face, and smiled like he was greeting an old friend.

There was no suspicion there, nor any anger. Just the calm welcoming face of Clark Kent, the Man of Steel.

"Superman," He greeted in the same tone anyone in Metropolis would greet its resident hero—unless they had something to hide, of course. He had to work a bit to keep from slipping into the casual tone he normally used with Clark, however. "I just saw you fly by. What happened?"

"Just a few robbers downtown," Superman said. "Nothing to worry about; they're in police custody now."

"That's good to hear. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Superman chuckled easily and shook his head.

"Just wanted to talk to you a bit," He said.

Terry nodded.

"I don't think this window opens, but I can call Jim down in front and ask him to let you in if you want to talk inside. Not that I really need to, I imagine." He said, wondering what Clark wanted to talk about. The Man of Steel's eyes never even twitched towards his backpack and he hadn't done anything in it since his first day here, so it probably wasn't that, but then what was he here for…?

"I'm afraid I can't stay," Clark said, smile turning apologetic. "I have a meeting soon that I need to attend, but I wanted to stop by to thank you for all your hard work."

A proverbial light bulb went off.

"Oh!" Terry remembered. "The Daily Planet! I was a bit busy this morning but some of my coworkers congratulated me about it. I heard Ms. Lane and Mr. Kent worked on it, though, so I'm sure it's good."

"I'll be sure to tell Lois that next time I see her," Superman said, normal smile returning and then widening to show several white teeth. "I'll ask if she can pass the message on to Mr. Kent, too."

"Thank you; I'll be sure to pick up a copy after work." Terry paused for a moment before allowing his brows to come together in honest confusion. "To be honest, though, I'm not sure exactly what I'm being thanked for…?"

"A lot of brilliant men and women pass through Metropolis," Superman said, turning his head to look at his city, eyes growing sad even though his smile didn't change. "Some of the greatest minds I've ever known. And yet…it's sad how few of them choose to use that brilliance to help people."

Terry stood slowly from his chair, moving to stand across from Superman before following his eyes to a tower in the distance.

"You're referring to Lex Luthor, I take it?" Terry asked quietly. Luthor was before his time, like many of Superman's older enemies—but that didn't mean he didn't know about the man or what he'd done.

"That's one example," Superman admitted, before turning back to him. "Sadly, it's not the only one, however. But I'm glad you're not like that, Mr. McGinnis. So I just wanted to thank you on behalf of all the lives you've helped and will help."

Terry turned his eyes away a bit, embarrassed, but that didn't stop his smile from growing.

"And thank you, too, Superman, for everything you've done for Metropolis and for the World. I don't want to keep you, but stop by sometime and I'll buy you a coffee; it's the least I can do in return for all the times I'm sure you have and will save my life."

Clark laughed at that, all farm boy, and nodded.

"I'll try to stop by some time," He promised, rising into the air. "I have high hopes for you, Mr. McGinnis. Keep up the hard work."

And then he was gone.

Snorting, Terry returned to his seat and picked his pencil up again.

He had work to do and lives to save—and he didn't need to be wearing a suit to do it.


	3. Interlude One: Scattered Reports

**The Last Son of Tomorrow**

**Interlude One: Scattered Reports**

**New Inventor Blindsides the Medical Community**

"…_Just this week, new inventor Terry McGinnis appears out of seemingly nowhere, taking the Medical Community by storm with a supposed cure for the horrible disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease…"_

"…_CJD is a horrible degenerative disease that targets the central nervous systems. It was a rare disease, but it made up for it by its sheer danger. Generally causing death within a year of onset at most, until now it was thought to have no cures…"_

"…_The cure has not yet been tested on human beings in clinical trials, but the initial results of lower level examinations seem promising…"_

**Bio-MEMS: Pharmacy on a Chip?**

"_Young inventor, Terry McGinnis, revealed his newest creation to the world at large today; an advanced form of the MEMS that have been saving lives for years…"_

"…_MEMS, aka Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, are commonly used in the Accelerometers of cars, where they sense the sudden deceleration of a crash and deploy airbags. Terry McGinnis' Bio-MEMS are intended function in a similar way, but detect problems within the human body instead…"_

"…_Following developments are intend to include pumps, filters, drug injectors, toxin detectors and any number of sensors to measure everything from blood pressure to minute changed in the chemistry of the human body. Depending on the specific issues of the person involved, specific Bio-MEMS systems will be used to detect and counter any problems that might arise…"_

"…_Modern scientists are still discussing the possible future of such technology, even suggestion the possibility of amplifying and decoding DNA using a process called 'polymerase chain reaction' and then analyzing it in minutes rather than days. Some have even suggested the possibility of reducing the entire modern medical lab to the size of a single medical lab. When asked for his opinion on such speculation, Mr. McGinnis smiled and said he'd prefer to be asked said questions 'in a year or two.' Could he be thinking of making such inventions a reality already?"_

**The Men of Tomorrow**

"…_Just last night, the now famous Terry McGinnis was made the CEO of Meditech Industries, which has only just renamed itself Tomorrow Industries by popular vote. Despite being the major shareholder of the company, he chose to be elected by the popular vote of the company's Board of Directors, rather than commit a hostile takeover…"_

"…_During the Celebration that occurred last night, Superman himself appeared to congratulate the newly christened CEO…"_

"…_The city has already begun referring to the two as Metropolis' Men of Tomorrow…"_

**Superman Stops Assassination Attempt**

"…_It was only seconds after publically announcing a plan to use a combination of nanotechnology and bacteria inspired by the metal-eating Halomonas titanicae to erase various types of common sources of ground and water pollution that famous CEO Terry McGinnis was the target of an Assassination attempt which was foiled only by the timely intervention of Superman…"_

"…_Despite the close call, Mr. McGinnis publically announced that he refused to be intimidated, stating he would continue with his plans, as scheduled. Superman declared his support of his fellow Man of Tomorrow and promised to safeguard the CEO from further attempts on his life…"_

"…_Frighteningly, the Assassin, rumored to be a member of the mysterious League of Shadows, escaped from police custody less then twenty-four hours after incarceration. Authorities say that evidence suggests he had outside accomplices, which may imply that more than one assassin may be seeking the CEO's life…"_

"…_Terry McGinnis refuses to be deterred, but has chosen to employ a series of bodyguards and has chosen to use bullet-proof glass for the windows of the new TI Building…"_

**Attempted Takeover of Tomorrow Industries**

"…_Famous billionaire Lex Luthor recently attempted to buyout Tomorrow Industries, but was pushed back by CEO Terry McGinnis. Mr. McGinnis is currently recovering from minor injuries sustained when an unknown Assassin attempted to bomb a Charity fundraiser he was hosting. Mr. McGinnis bravely attempted to deactivate the bomb to give the other attendees time to escape, but while he succeeded, his attempted Assassin had hidden three other bombs in various places within the building—but another timely save by Superman allowed the CEO to narrowly walk away with his life…"_

"…_Despite the attempt on his life, Mr. McGinnis publicly announced that he considered the fundraiser, in which several million dollars were raised, a complete success, and stated he would begin working on his next project as soon as he was out of the Hospital…"_

"…_Famous reporters Clark Kent and Lois Lane have been quoted to find the timing of these events suspicious, but no evidence linking Mr. Luthor with the attempts has come to light…"_

**Super Cells: The Way of the Future?**

"_After a series of assassination attempts that would make anyone question their career choice, CEO Terry McGinnis announced his biggest project to date—or rather, his smallest one…"_

"…_Intends to use a number of specially engineered bacteria to solve a number of strangely disconnected problems. Today, he revealed four startling new breeds of bacteria. A new and improved version of __Geobacter Sulfurreducens, intended to devour radiation, a mixed breed of bacteria intended to devour cellulose and produce electricity, a genetically enhanced breed of E. Coli that produces hydrocarbon chains with promising potential for the quick production of new supplies of petroleum, and, most stunningly of all, a genetically engineered variant of clostridia combined specific cancer-fighting genes, which only reproduces in low oxygen environments, such as the one's where cancer cells thrive…"_

_"…Could this be what millions have been asking for? Could this bacteria lead to the end of Cancer? It's too early to tell, but one thing is for sure: Mr. McGinnis' would-be Assassins are sure to be displeased…"_

_"…Perhaps in anticipation of the dangers that seem sure to come, Superman has been seen flying in close proximity of TI Tower all day…"_

**Today, Bacteria. Tomorrow, Space!**

"…_Perhaps displeased by recent reports that there may be a person in America—or, god forbid, two—who don't know the name Terry McGinnis, the famous CEO of Tomorrow Industries has recently declared his ambitions to enter the 'Space Race,' stating a desire to compete with the likes of Lex Corp and Wayne Industries…"_

"…_Despite being an apparent newcomer in the field, authorities have stated an interest in TI's 'extremely efficient design.' Rumors say that Tomorrow Industries has begun work on synthesizing new fuel sources to make launching satellites a much simpler process, to go alongside his new satellite…"_

"…_Rumor also states that Mr. McGinnis has been recently talking to several members of the Automobile Industry. Given how closely he has stuck to his company's motto of 'Tomorrow, Today,' one can only wonder if there aren't flying cars in our near future…"_


	4. Equal and Opposite Reactions

**The Last Son of Tomorrow**

**Equal and Opposite Reactions**

"I don't trust him." Batman said flatly, seated at the connecting point of the U-shaped table. In the air before him hung a holographic screen, which he'd glanced at all of once, merely to determine what was on it.

Even if he didn't live in Metropolis, business knew no borders. He made a point of keeping up with the business world, especially where it could affect Wayne Enterprises and had a subscription to the Daily Planet besides.

"I do," Superman replied, relaxed by his side. Like Batman, he didn't need to read anything the Daily Planet wrote, though for different reasons.

Batman turned towards his friend and didn't so much glare as tried to stare into the depths of his soul. Superman had been on the receiving end of looks that could literally kill, though, so he just smiled back.

"Both of you, wait," Wonder Woman murmured, though she had quickly finished the article, her eyes flashing over the text at high speeds. "Some of us haven't finished reading."

Batman shifted his gaze, realizing the futility of trying to cow his best friend, and looked around the table slowly. The Flash had long since finished reading, but the others were sifting through the article at their own pace. Their reactions were about the same as he'd expected. J'onn was wary, but that was to be expected of anything that potentially affected his people, but it eased quickly by the time he finished reading. The Green Lanterns were attentive, as they always were with matters concerning space and its possible dangers to earth, but didn't seem concerned. Everyone else was only bothering to read it attentively to see what Superman and Batman were having a difference of opinion over.

Katar Hol, the Hawkman, looked around, the question obvious in him, despite the mask covering his face.

"No one else is going to ask? Okay, then; what's wrong, Batman?" He asked. "I know I'm hardly an expert in this field, but it's just a satellite, right? The Earth's government will examine it thoroughly to make sure nothing's wrong with it before allowing it to launch…unless I'm mistaken?"

"You're not mistaken, Hawkman," Superman assured. "Nobody's going to allow a government satellite to be launched without examining it thoroughly. As a matter of fact, Terry invited me to examine the satellite with my X-ray Vision, to assure the officials that were present that he hadn't tampered with it in anyway."

"I take it Lex Corp and Wayne Enterprises choose not to have their satellites checked like that?" Green Arrow asked.

"Indeed," Superman nodded. "Luthor in particular said I would be biased in any examination of his design. Which is probably true, granted."

"You didn't check it out?" Oliver Queen asked, furrowing his brow.

"Of course I did. And I can say with certainty that it would probably be more fuel efficient if it included less lead."

"Well," John Stewart began. "I have to admit, the new TI Satellite seems like a pretty good option by simple virtue of not being made by Luthor, even if Wayne Enterprises has done good work in the past. What are we missing?"

"It's not—" Batman wavered for a moment. "—_Just_ the Satellite. It's the man who _made_ it. You all know about Terry McGinnis."

"Us and everyone else in the world," The Flash said. "What about him?"

"Where did he come from? What are his goals? Why is he doing this? And how did he get so smart?"

"How did Luthor get so smart, Batman?" Superman refuted. "I know Terry and he hasn't done anything wrong. The inventions and innovations he's created will save millions of lives and as far as I can tell, that's his only goal. And if that's the case, does it matter why he chose to do so or where he came from? We all came from different places, too, but we agreed to protect people—does it matter if we came from different states, countries, or even worlds?"

"Luthor was brilliant—but he didn't create knowledge from nothing. He studied, tested, examined and learned. Extremely quickly, granted, but we know why he's as knowledgeable as he is. But who taught Terry McGinnis how to make satellites? How to use nanotechnology and genetically engineer bacteria and cure diseases no one else could? And he never fails, either; he tries and he succeeds, in every field he attempts. He's decades ahead of everyone else, raised a young and insignificant local organization in Metropolis to a global superpower with buildings under construction all over the world in a simple matter of years, and as near as anyone can tell, he's just going to grow bigger with time. At the rate it's growing, Tomorrow Industries could easily achieve a monopoly in any number of fields simply by being too ahead of the game for anyone else to hope to compete. And this doesn't worry _any _of you?"

"What are you trying to say?" Hal Jordan asked. "That you think he might be the next Lex Luthor?"

"No," Batman said. "I don't think Terry McGinnis will ever create biological monstrosities or giant robots to attack Metropolis or destroy his enemies or take over the world…but I do worry somewhat if that's simply because he doesn't _have to_. Where is he now, after just a few years? One of the strongest, richest, most famous men in the world? Where will he be in ten more? Twenty? What will Tomorrow Industries be in fifty years? If Terry McGinnis wanted to rule the world, I don't think he'd have to make any armies or spill any blood to do so; I think he'd just have to wait until Tomorrow Industries is what everyone goes to for everything."

"And that's why you're so suspicious of Terry and TI?" Superman asked. "Because he could potentially grow too strong? Couldn't the same be said of the Justice League? We started with only seven and now there are sixteen of us. In the future, who knows how large or powerful we might grow? Perhaps one day there might be an entire legion of superheroes protecting the world from threats? Does that worry you, too?"

Batman looked at him.

"Yes," He stated frankly. "I plan for the worst; that's just what I do. I won't apologize for it, because I'm not sorry about it. But don't you think that the possibility might deserve examination?"

Superman frowned and it was obvious that the suspicion of a man he trusted didn't sit well with him—but he didn't protest as murmurs spread throughout the league.

**XxXXxX**

Terry was currently bored out of his mind. He was sitting alone at his big desk in his huge office, filling out enormous amounts of paperwork.

One of the disadvantages of climbing up the economic ladder as quickly as he and his company were now doing was that all those permits that needed to be filled out, bills that needed to be paid, events that needed to be scheduled, materials that needed to be ordered, and meetings, speeches, and negotiations that had to be planned still had to happen. Added to all of that, people needed to be paid, vacations had to be accounted for, workers had to get background checks, new buildings had to be constructed, new employees had to be hired on a global scale, patents had to filled out for new inventions, research had to be funded, he had to pay taxes, and that was just the beginning. There were two faces to every company—the public face and what happens behind the scenes in places like his office—and while how they looked to everyone else was important, it was what happened in here that made the company rule, even in companies that weren't doing anything illegal, like his.

All of which amounted to him having to basically fill out huge amounts of paperwork.

It kind of made him wish he had a Lucius Fox to do all of it for him. He had hired assistants of his own, but even though he wasn't doing anything wrong, there were still a lot of things he didn't want people he wasn't sure he could trust to see. Common sense would have told him there were a lot of people out there that would steal from him or try to ruin him if the assassination attempts hadn't already made that obvious.

The downside of not being able to trust anyone was that you, well, couldn't trust anyone. Not with the important things, at least, meaning he had to divide up the paperwork he had to make sure none of his assistants got the full picture, which still left him having to do a number of confidential things all by himself. He really needed to find some assistants that he could trust absolutely and could be sure wouldn't get kidnapped and tortured for information. While he was fairly certain most of his current employees were trustworthy, he couldn't endanger them like that.

So here he was at twenty-three minutes past midnight, angrily scrawling his signature onto one of the forms, removing it from the space in front of him, and angrily slapping it down on top of the completed pile. He did the same thing with the next and the one after that and the one _after _that, repeating the process again and again while constantly wishing he'd suddenly discover his Kryptonian Heritage and shoot laser beams out of his eyes and incinerate his desk or something.

He paused for a moment as his wrist began to pain him and took the break from the paperwork almost gratefully even though he knew it would only last a moment. He put his pen down for a moment and rolled his wrist slowly, but a moment later, Mother Box fixed it and pinged.

"Yes, Mother Box; I realize the more I get done now, the less I'll have to do later." Terry said, taking a calming breath. He'd had to do that a lot these last few years. "Thank you for your assistance."

He picked up his pen and returned to signing forms when Mother Box pinged again.

"Someone's always coming, Mother Box. We live in Metropolis and we're in one of the biggest buildings in the city." He said, though he obediently took note and straightened up. When Mother Box warned him it was always worth paying attention. He swerved around in his seat, gazing over the Metropolis Skyline as it elaborated. Even in the dead of night, it never really got dark in Metropolis—the city kept itself bright long after the sun went down.

Terry liked it that way; it reminded him of Neo-Gotham.

"Coming by air? Is it Superman or should I make myself scarce?" Terry asked, standing. He reached over to pick up the suitcase he'd traded his backpack for years ago. There was a secret compartment for him to fold his other suit in, though it also worked fine to carry documents. As Mother Box made another ping, he stopped in place, freezing entirely. "Oh."

He gently set down his suitcase and looked at it silently for a long moment before all but falling back into his chair. Just sitting there for a second, he inhaled deeply before slowly exhaling.

"Oh," He repeated. He licked his lips. "Well, we figured it was only a matter of time, didn't we?"

These last few years, he'd stuck mainly to his headquarters in Metropolis, leaving only when duty called. He'd been to Gotham a few times on special occasions and had even been in the same room as Bruce Wayne now and again…but they hadn't really talked much and when they had, it had been Bruce who usually initiated the conversations.

He'd wanted to go over there and talk the first time he'd seen the man, but the first time he'd seen him it was like he'd been rooted to the floor. Bruce Wayne in this world and time was so…different. He was younger, but it wasn't just that.

Terry had always known Bruce Wayne after he'd been Batman—after he'd taken the mask off, at least. But this Bruce Wayne _was_ the mask. And there had probably been a time when the same was true for his Bruce; that Batman had been the real face. But mask or not, this Bruce Wayne was a partier, to the eyes of the public, and a playboy. A happy, easygoing rich kid, rather than a jaded old man.

He'd known from the beginning that this wasn't the Bruce Wayne of his world. But it was then and there that he'd realized how dissimilar they were beyond that. And it had been…uncomfortable, to watch. He didn't have anything against the man, but seeing him standing there, partying, laughing, playing around—it had just been surreal to watch. It was like he'd come home to find a dusty old mansion and someone had torn it down to put up a Superman museum instead.

It had seemed wrong to try to go over there and simply start a conversation with a man that he realized he didn't know at all.

But then the question arose—he didn't know Bruce Wayne…but did he know Batman?

He hadn't had a chance to check.

No; he hadn't wanted to risk it by checking.

But it wasn't really up to him now, was it?

Mother Box vibrated silently against his chest, both reassuring and warning. He had five seconds to do something.

He chose to wait, counting down the seconds like they were the timer of a bomb.

"I know you're there," Terry spoke after five seconds had passed. "Would you like to come in, Batman, or do you want to have a look around first?"

Batman was too trained to make any noise, but Terry knew he was surprised. A part of him half expected Batman to just come in through the window, but he shook the childish thought away immediately.

After a minute passed by in silence, he just went back to filling out his reports, figuring Batman was taking the long way around. He probably _was_ going to have a look around in the building, too, so Terry settled himself in for a wait.

Bruce, being himself, proceeded to _keep_ him waiting. It annoyed Terry more than a little bit, but it didn't worry him.

He had nothing to hide.

Nothing that was in this building, at the very least. As a man who'd once been on the Superhero side of things and broken into more than one building to find incriminating evidence, he knew better then to keep anything in as obvious a place as this—and honestly, he couldn't understand why anyone would keep something like that in a building hundreds of people passed through on a daily bases, anyway.

It wasn't until nearly twenty minutes later that Mother Box shook against his chest again, causing him to raise his head and look at the door.

"Come in," He said, signing one last form as the door slid open. "To be honest, I'm kind of disappointed you just came through the door. I'd kind of hoped to be on the receiving end of your famous sudden appearances."

It was kind of childish, but he'd really wanted to see the old man in action, kind of like a tiny little ninja wanting to see his daddy's awesome skills. But even Batman had to wake up pretty early in the morning to get something past Mother Box.

"There's no point if you already know I'm here," Batman said, taking one step over the doorway and letting the door close behind him. He let his cloak flow over him, hiding his hands completely. They might have been close to his utility belt, ready for anything, or they might be completely at ease—Terry couldn't tell, which was probably the idea. "You're pretty observant for an ordinary businessman."

It was almost an accusation, but mostly an attempt to probe for information.

"Yes, well, I'm awesome," Terry replied, not falling for it. "Would you like to tell me why you're here, Batman?"

"You don't seem surprised to see me." He noted.

"That's not an answer," Terry sighed. "But no, Batman; if anything, I'm kind of surprised it took you this long to come see me."

"Why would I come see you?" Batman asked, tone all business, urging Terry to talk rather than provide any answers of his own.

Terry resisted the urge to roll his eyes as the basic interrogation technique, but kept talking anyway. He could stay silent, but that would just make Bruce even more suspicious—and it's not like Batman had anything on him. He couldn't, since Terry hadn't done anything wrong.

But Bruce was talking business so he straightened up and did the same.

"You're suspicious of me, of my background, of my company, of my closeness to Superman, of my inventions, of my intentions, etc." Terry made a rolling gesture before shrugging. "Any of those or all of them. Maybe even a few I missed. Now, if you have any actual questions for me, I'd be more than happy to answer them. Or you can continue letting me ask the questions and answer them and we can string this along. But can we hurry this up? I have a lot of paperwork to finish. Not that this conversation isn't riveting or anything."

He had a feeling the Bruce was glaring at him behind that mask but he ignored it and continued.

"If you wish to check to make sure my company is on the level, then feel free to do so. I have no intention of hindering your investigations in anyway—though there are naturally things my company will need to keep hidden, such as the designs of our products. If you would prefer, then instead of snooping around at night, you can come by with Superman in the daytime; I'll clear things with the front desk and you can look around as much as you want. As long as you don't antagonize them or hinder their work, you can even speak to my employees." Terry offered. "You can even stop by to question me after what's probably going to be a sleepless night when I'm sure to be easier to question."

When Batman didn't reply, he took the silence as consent and reached for the notepad on his desk to scribble himself a reminder. Looking back up at Bruce, a childish part of him wished he could see the man's face. He was willing to bet Batman had never received a response like this to one of his investigations.

"Is there anything else I can help you with, Batman?"

The Dark Knight was silent for a long moment, just watching Terry.

"Why are you doing this?" He asked and if Terry hadn't known any better, he felt he might have heard a faint trace of confusion in his voice.

"I think you already know that. What does an innocent man have to fear from Batman?" Terry asked rhetorically. "You won't find anything, no matter how hard you look, because I've done nothing wrong and neither has my company. I have no intention to do anything wrong, either. I don't mean to boast, but I have no need to do so—I'm already so successful. Why would I risk it all on some illegal scheme?"

Batman stood as if he'd half expected that. For a moment, Terry thought he was going to ask another question—but he didn't. Maybe at this point, he wasn't sure _what_ to ask. He'd look around, Terry was sure, and go over everything with a fine-toothed comb, searching as much for questions as for answers, but Terry wasn't worried.

Bruce turned back towards the door.

"If Superman comes by tomorrow, I'll invite him for a cup of coffee like I always do. If you want, you can come too. Goodbye, Batman." Terry said as he left.

As the door slid closed, Terry sighed quietly, before checking his watch and smiling.

The night wasn't over yet.

He still had time.

**XxXXxX**

Finally finished with everything, Terry carefully packed everything away, locked all the drawers and doors, shut off the lights, and walked to the car he'd bought. It was no Batmobile, but it got him places and didn't cause people to make a fuss, so it was fine, he supposed.

Slowing a bit as he reached it, he let Mother Box run a scan on it to make sure nobody had attached any bombs to it or cut the brakes again.

He kind of had to feel bad for his car insurance company. And was kind of amazing how much money they lost on him.

Mother Box pinged its findings—no one was trying to kill him today, apparently, but someone had attached something to it that was giving off a signal. Probably a tracer. Crouching, he curved his fingers under the backend of the car, running his fingers alongside it until he felt something uneven. Detaching it with two fingers, he lifted it into the light of a streetlamp.

As he'd suspected, Bruce had put it there. Naturally, it was bat-shaped and everything.

Tossing it over his shoulder with a mild grin, he got into his car. It was a short drive home, even though he lived outside the city limits, and since he always had to work long hours, there was very rarely traffic as he went home. A part of him wondered if Bruce was going to follow him home, but he doubted it—where he lived wasn't exactly hard information to come by, even if you weren't the World's Greatest Detective. The tracer had probably been put there to monitor his movements, not track him home.

It wasn't until he was safely home, behind all the defenses it offered—which was a lot—and down in his safe room that he was sure that he was beyond any prying eyes and could relax completely. His safe room was nothing compared to the Batcave, but it wasn't supposed to be, either. He'd told Superman about it and even showed him inside, so even Batman shouldn't be too suspicious of it. It was really just a bedroom, behind several layers of defenses, as should be expected of someone who regularly underwent assassination attempts. It didn't have anything suspicious inside of it, or even much decoration—it was a Spartan, featureless room, all things considered.

But to Terry, it was extremely useful for one reason more than any other.

The entire room was completely sound proof. In fact, he could say with complete certainty that a Boom Tube could open in the middle of the room and someone listening at the door would never know.

Smiling, he opened his suitcase, using the secondary combination to open the secret compartment rather than the main one, and withdrawing his suit. For a moment, he just looked at it, feeling the deceptively soft material conform to his touch.

He'd had to modify it. He hadn't wanted to—in fact, it had almost seemed like a crime. But as much as he wanted too, he couldn't be known as Batman right now. Someone would notice eventually and all the wrong people would get interested. So he'd had to make some changes, no matter how much he hadn't wanted too. The bright red bat on the chest had been replaced with the same black as the rest of the suit and he'd had to remove the ears completely.

It was kind of silly to pout over the loss of a symbol and some ears, but so sue him. He was Batman, this was his Batsuit, and taking parts of it away seemed almost wrong.

But a man had to do what a man had to do, so he replaced his clothes with his suit, slid Mother Box into its special compartment on his Utility belt, and basked in how good it felt to be back in his suit at all. He'd kept up his training and had taken regular trips to a number of cities to foil crimes and keep his game up, but this was his first real mission in what seemed like a long, long time.

"You ready, Mother Box?" He asked, smiling beneath his mask as he heard her response. "Yeah, me too. Ace, watch the fort. You know what to do if anyone tries to get in."

Ace barked from his spot on the bed and the feed he'd attached to his collar after locking the door transmitted it to his communicator. If he started barking, Terry would know that he needed to check on the place.

"Mother Box?"

A nearly concussive bang filled the room before he even finished speaking as the Matter Threshold opened up before him.

Without another word, Terry took a running start and jumped through the portal, coming out the other end over twelve miles in the air above his target.

It felt good to be back.

Freefalling was fun, after you got past the shock and fear of the first few times. The ending could be dangerous if you didn't know what you were doing, but the ride down was really fun—and for someone with a suit like his, the danger wasn't a problem.

So Terry let himself fall, relaxed and professional even as gravity dragged him down faster by the second.

This was a delicate operation—or at least had the potential to become one very quickly if he messed up, simply due to the sheer number of unknown factors—but he'd planned for everything he could as best he was able. There were still a lot of risky variables that he simply had no way of anticipating, but that was true of any mission; he accepted that fact every time he went out in costume.

At twelve miles up, neither the noise nor the light of the Boom Tube would reach the guards below. A pretty simple calculation said that he had about sixty-three seconds of freefall so long as his descent was unhindered, but he'd start slowing his descent after about fifty seconds. The always unpredictable human element meant he couldn't be completely sure where all the guards patrolling the area would be, but a quick scan using his various vision filters would tell him that once he was in range. The people running the building had done a good job preventing him from accessing any of the security cameras inside, keeping everything off the grid, but a few days of legwork had gotten him access to the official blueprints and few more had gotten him the real ones. He'd checked the official tax records, but he was pretty sure most of it was fictional—armed guards hadn't been on it for one, nor had the payments for the experiments going on inside.

Said experiments had been a pain in the ass to find out about in the first place, as all the reports on the results had been written, transported under armed guard, and then disappeared after reaching their location—probably destroyed. He'd had to break into the transport without anyone noticing during the few times the guards in the back of the truck hadn't been watching over it.

As Mother Box pinged that he was reaching the forty-five second mark, he counted the seconds the rest of the way to fifty and spread his wings. In seconds, his speed slowed dramatically, and he began to carefully glide the rest of the way down. His night vision filter switched quickly to infrared and he swept his gaze over the perimeter. Four guards, as he'd learned from his scouting missions. Two were patrolling close to the north-east and –west corners of the building, the third was about halfway down the side of the east wall, and the forth was about fifty feet away from the south wall and moving away.

He shifted his glide to take him to the roof of the building along its southern side. Landing silently, he switched from infrared back to night vision and squinted out at the guard. He had a gun, but it was holstered at his side. It was positioned professionally and would be easy to draw, but the safety was on, for obvious reasons. Guns were heavy and constantly having one at the ready was both dangerous and suspicious; Terry was sure that his years of employment consisted largely of not using it, too. Honestly, it wasn't really his fault that this was the night he should have been carrying it.

Terry turned his suit's stealth mode on and then turned a pair of knobs on his belt. Leaping from the top of the three story building, he easily glided the fifty feet to his target, completely silent even as he moved through the air. He grabbed the unwary guard and pinned his arms to his side before putting him into a chokehold, blocking the blood flow to his brain. The guard tried to struggle, to scream, to cry for help, but he couldn't resist Terry's enhanced strength and not a word escaped through the vice like grip on his throat.

Not that it would have mattered even if he'd managed to scream. Acoustium was fun that way.

Terry patiently waited for the man to stop struggling and sag against him. The middle and index finger of his free hand were pressed to the man's chest, the second acoustic device allowing him to hear through the sound masking. Once he was sure the man was down, he set him on the ground and turned off his camouflage but left the sound masking on. If there was one thing he'd learned from Shriek, it was the importance of sound and how dangerous it could be once taken away.

Quickly returning to the building, he ascended to the top quickly with the boosters in his shoes. Moving across the rooftop like a living shadow, he crouched near the north-western edge, perching like a gargoyle. He waited in patient silence for the slowly walking guard, a younger man then the first and probably newer since he was still holding his hand nearby his gun, as if ready to draw it at the slightest provocation, to move out of sight of his north-eastern counterpart and move around the corner before jumping down upon him, stepping back to put his back to the wall and keep them both out of sight until the second guard was down and then setting his unconscious body to make sure it wouldn't be seen.

Returning to the rooftop, he moved to do the same thing to the third guard, stalking him from above and taking him down when there was no one to see him. After that, the final guard was simple enough to take care of, especially since he was just leaning against the wall, smoking.

All four of the perimeter guards down, Terry refocused on the building itself, moving to the door and attaching his electronic lock decipherer to it. Four and a half seconds later, the door clicked open and he simply walked inside.

Unlike the outside, the interior of the building was kept brightly lit and Terry had to squint his eyes for a moment against the light. The hallway was normal looking and largely featureless. It could have passed for a normal research facility and on the top three floors, it perhaps it was. He hadn't risked speaking directly to any of the employees, but the buildings taxes indicated regular payments to a number of employees who did indeed live in the general area. In all likelihood, most of them didn't even know what was going on beneath their feet.

Terry silently stalked forward, two fingers extended. The circuitry in them would warn him of the approach of anyone who was around after hours.

But he didn't hear anything. Besides the security guards, no one seemed to be here—but Terry didn't believe that for a second. If no one was here, why would there still be cars out-front? Especially the same cars that had been here every other time he'd scouted out the place. Sometimes things could run late, but seven different times over the course of three months, each on different days of the week? Especially since the license plates of the cars were each registered as belonging to one of the facilities leading scientists?

It was too much to be a coincidence. They were definitely here intentionally, working on something.

Terry walked straight past each of the numbered rooms, barely glancing into them. He was pretty sure the floors above ground were clear and the annual health and safety checks hadn't reported anything strange or unusual. He was almost certain everything important was happening in the three unregistered basements. The stairway to the basement was locked, but it was, to him, outdated, and it was easy enough to get open.

As he expected, at least one person had been down there before him, tonight. There was a light on in the basement, a coat thrown over a chair, and several random seeming objects left on a table. There was not, however, anything that looked like a door.

Frowning beneath his mask, Terry moved over to what looked like a stacked set of filing cabinets and activated his ultraviolet filter. There were finger prints on pretty much every handle and a few minutes with his automatic lock pick, confirmed that there were actual files within the cabinets.

Frown deepening, he stepped back. The true blue prints had detailed a place for an elevator behind these cabinets and he was sure the cabinets weren't a fake cover. He thought about moving them, but shook his head—while he could do that fairly easily with his suit, it seemed like an awful lot of trouble to make a bunch of scientists go through every night. Instead, he looked around, mentally noting how many finger prints were on each object and then moved to an uncovered section of wall that seemed covered in finger and hand prints and pressed his own against it. It sank in an inch before clicking open to reveal a keypad.

Shaking his head a little, he attached his decipherer to it and waited several seconds to it to beep, even as the row of filing cabinets slid open, revealing the elevator.

This was where his Intel began to run dry. He knew a lot about the upper floors from reports, but almost nothing specific about any of the hidden floors. Even so, he'd just have to make due.

The elevator quickly came up to get him, even without him pressing any buttons, and the trip down to the first hidden floor was equally fast. He stuck close to the doors, masking the sound of their opening with his proximity. Sliding quickly out of the elevator, he activated his camouflage and ran down the short hallway into the large room that probably took up the entire level.

For a minute, he just hung back and watched them work. The scientists of the Prometheus Institute worked efficiently at the machines that filled most of the room—monitors, microscopes, analyzers, and computers. They spoke to each other amiably with the familiarity of long time associates. He recognized each of their faces, from when he'd looked them up using their license plates and had gone through their records.

A part of him wondered how they felt about doing this while another wondered what would have happened if he hadn't been so suspicious.

In truth, he hadn't even been looking at the Prometheus Institute itself, at first. When he'd gotten a chance, he'd subtly looked into several organizations that had been, at the very least, suspicious and had dubious morals in his own reality. Lex Corp had been one, of course, as had Ra's Al Ghul business fronts. He'd checked out the Mobs in Gotham, as they existed in this time, had tried to check on the state of Gorilla Grodd with limited success, and had considered checking on Darkseid, but had deemed that too risky at the moment, since any Boom Tube's there would draw exactly the wrong type of attention.

And, of course, there had been Cadmus. Before his time or not, both Bruce and Clark had gone on at great length about Cadmus and the trouble it had caused. He'd relaxed a tiny bit when he'd found out it was a private organization rather than a government owned one—and then he'd gotten a dozen times more suspicious when he'd learned it had been founded by Lex Luthor. He wanted to check out Cadmus' base of operations, but he had no idea what he'd be getting into if he did and was having a great deal of trouble finding out. Accessing the true blueprints had taken a lot of time and effort and all it had revealed was that there were about fifty floors of unknown factors beneath their public façade.

Not wanting to simply rush head first into…who knows what, honestly, he'd checked out the organizations background, the construction company, sponsors, and associated organizations, which had lead him to a number of different companies that were more than they seemed as well as make him wish he'd gotten a few more lessons from Mr. Sage.

The Prometheus Organization had jumped to the top of the list simply due to its name. Just as the mythological Cadmus had created men from dragon's teeth, Cadmus had been famous for artificially creating life in his reality. The titan Prometheus had, in some myths, fashioned man out of clay. He'd examined it thoroughly; wary it might be doing the same as Cadmus.

But he'd thought about it all wrong. While Prometheus may have been _known_ for sculpting men from clay…he was _famous_ for stealing fire from the gods.


	5. To Take Back Fire

**The Last Son of Tomorrow**

**To Take Back Fire**

The Prometheus Institute's focus was the study of Metahuman abilities, focusing on the seemingly random appearance of such abilities in normal humans. That was to say, they were examining the Metagene and hoping to figure out how it works, how to instigate it in people who don't naturally have it, and to discovered if and how it could be artificially adjusted to achieve specific results, with the funding and backing of Lex Corp.

In other words, Luthor was trying to figure out how to manufacture Metahumans.

'For nefarious purposes' was so obvious that it didn't even need to be said.

As soon as he'd learned of what was going on, Terry had taken an extreme interest in finding out everything he could about the project. He didn't necessarily have anything against the study of the Metahumans or the possibilities therein, but letting Luthor do it was pretty much inevitably going to end horribly for everyone involved. He'd temporarily put his research into Cadmus on hold to focus on Prometheus, which had still resulted in a great deal of work for him.

But it didn't have over fifty floors of uncertainties and unknowns, which meant breaking was a lot easier. If nothing else, he could search three floors before any of the guards he'd knocked out came too or someone noticed. Fifty, on the other hand, he wouldn't bet on.

Of course, that wasn't the real reason he was here…

Terry shook himself, focusing on the scientists once more. He wanted to take a closer look at what they were doing, but he didn't want to risk any of them noticing him while he did so.

But then, that was an easy enough problem to solve. He did a quick head count and smiled. Seven scientists and seven cars. Everyone was here and accounted for. They'd probably finished up tonight's hands on work and were just examining their findings before turning in for the night.

Terry slid Mother Box from her compartment at his belt and subtly stuck her to the wall. As far as he'd been able to tell, everything below ground was off the grid and there hadn't been any noticeable inconsistencies with their power usage. There was probably a generator of some sort on site, which made things simpler.

"It's too bright in here," Terry said, knowing Mother Box would still hear him. "Turn the lights down."

Immediately, Mother Box began to absorb power from the building, draining it to recharge herself. In seconds, the lights began to flicker and dim randomly as the power was unevenly drawn from them. As the scientists began to quickly speak among themselves in surprise and hastily save the data they were working on, Terry struck, moving among them with no more presence then a ghost.

There may have been more of them then him, but he had the element of surprise, a futuristic combat suit, and was invisible and inaudible, whereas they were a group of elderly scientists. He took them all down before anyone could even realize they were under attack.

Terry twisted the two knobs on his belt back into their normal position, making himself audible again now that everyone was down.

"That's enough, Mother Box," He said, pondering the computer screen he now stood before. As the lights returned to normal, he took a seat and began scrolling through the files on it. Nodding after a minute, he drew a small hard drive from his belt, plugged it in, and began to cut and paste everything on the computer over too it. Retrieving Mother Box as it downloaded everything, he searched everything else in the room, took a look through several of the microscopes, and checking the recently printed results by the printer in the corner.

A search through the cabinets along a wall revealed a number of drugs that he analyzed with the identifier in his left index finger, while the refrigerators revealed a series of carefully marked blood and tissue samples that he examined with the scanner on his belt. Stepping back for a minute, pondering, he decided that it would probably be a bad idea to leave all of these here. The samples he drew out of the refrigerators and tossed haplessly to the ground where room temperature would do most of the work for him, but he gave them a once over with his wrist mounted laser nonetheless. The chemicals he poured down the sink and left it on to wash them away.

Retrieving his hard drive as it finished downloading everything, he smashed the computer monitor before reaching down below it and tearing apart the hard ware. He circled the room, making a general mess of everything and then moved back to the elevator, content in the knowledge that it would be some time before this facility would be back up and running, even if they did find some new subjects, and look it down to the second level.

Unlike the first floor, which was basically a single room, the second floor was an actual hallway with rooms on either side.

Or rather, cells on either side. Each had a large window, presumably one-way, which took up most of the wall, and a single door. To his left coming out of the elevator was a cell marked P-19; to his right, P-20. Both were empty, though they showed signs that hadn't always been the case.

He couldn't be sure what had happened to them until he checked the records he'd taken, but he could think of several possibilities and most of them were bad.

He kept walking. P-18 through P-14 were empty, but P-13 had one of the people he was looking for in it. A young man with short black hair slouched on his cot, looking both tired and bored. He wore a white jump suit with his designation printed on it, but Terry's eyes were immediately drawn to the power restraining collar around his neck.

He looked different without his costume or staff, but not so much that Terry couldn't recognize him from his photos.

In another world—in his world—this kid would have been the King of the Joker's Royal Flush Gang.

But not in this one.

The door clicked open as his decipherer finished its work and Terry entered the room, instantly drawing the boy's attention. P-13 straightened from his slouch, looking at him with blatant interest.

"P-13," Terry said. "Come with me. We're leaving."

P-13 raised an eyebrow at him, but stood nonetheless. Terry wasn't surprised; he'd walked out with the Joker in his reality and even a mysterious figure dressed all in black looked trustworthy next to _him_.

"And who are you supposed to be, mystery man?" P-13 asked, raising an eyebrow.

"The guy getting you out of here," Terry replied bluntly. "We can talk later, but for now, we should hurry."

P-13's eyes sharpened, but not with anger. He moved to the edge of the doorway and peaked around the corner, as if he were expecting the Boogieman to show up.

"Who's coming?" He asked, and Terry noted that he sounded…worried?

"No one, as far as I'm aware." Terry replied, keeping both the interest and confusion out of his voice. "There shouldn't be anyone for a few hours, at least. But if I'm wrong about that, I'd just as soon not find out. What about you?"

P-13 relaxed slightly, though Terry wasn't sure he realized he had. The younger man rolled his shoulders once in what was probably a nervous habit and nodded.

"Leave now, talk late; whatever you say boss." He paused, then, looking at Terry speculatively. Slowly, he lifted his hands to his restraining collar, but he didn't tug at it. If he had, all he would have gotten for his troubles was a painful shock. "What about this?"

Terry had seen that coming. The moment he had learned that they were keeping their powers restrained, it was obvious that they were going to ask him to release them. He'd like to say that he was a good enough person to immediately decide to free them and never think of doing anything else, but he wasn't—he couldn't afford to be. They had been criminals in his world, going along with the Joker to threaten millions of lives. Could he trust them?

He'd thought about it long and hard, worried that they'd stab him in the back as soon as he freed them—but he'd still decided to free them. He had too. They would get free eventually, after all—he wasn't rescuing them from this place just so he could throw them in a cage for the rest of their lives for crimes they hadn't committed. He was here to free them, so he might as well do it right.

But more than that, it was just the right thing to do. They didn't have to be bad. Their childhoods had been stolen because of their powers and they'd been imprisoned for no other reason than chance. They hadn't done anything wrong and while they could have been bad if someone else was the only person to reach out to them, he was the one standing here now.

So he chose to trust them, because someone had to. If he didn't trust them at least a bit, how could he expect any trust in return? The Joker wasn't here breaking them out—he was. So what if they had the potential to do bad things? He did too. Everyone did. But that didn't mean they didn't have the potential for more.

Bruce had chosen to see that potential in him. He couldn't do any less.

So he reached up to P-13's throat, a small forklike device extending from his finger. A moment of fiddling and the collar clicked open and P-13 wasted no time removing it and tossing it aside. The metahuman sighed happily and cracked his neck from side to side, before raising his right hand.

A ball of fire erupted in the palm of his hand and P-13 looked at it was a pleased, almost crooked, sort of grin. Terry watched, wary, but not willing to make the first move. It was up to P-13 to make his own choice here.

Besides, he was pretty sure he could put the guy down at this range if he tried anything funny.

But he didn't. The former captive merely closed his hand around the flame, snuffing it out in an instant.

"It feels good to be free," He said. "What's next, boss man?"

"We free the others. Come on."

P-12 was a blonde, but he still recognized her as Queen even without her hair being dyed white. P-11 looked just like his picture, except for the ones taken when he was in costume as Jack. P-10 looked…exactly like his pictures, whether they were of Ten or not.

Getting them to come with him was easy, but he'd expected it to be. Freedom or a life time in captivity was on the level of Cake or Death when it came to making decisions. Looking at them as they followed him, Terry couldn't help wonder if they had followed the Joker like they were now following him and that thought made him feel somewhat uncomfortable, but he dismissed the feeling as best he could.

Terry stalked down the rest of the hallway, but the rest of the rooms were empty. Looking through the windows, he saw additional restraints, a tub of water in one, and other additions that made him wonder who had been in these cells—and what had happened to them.

The Hallway ended with a door leading to a large room, bigger than any of the others. It was a bland room of nothing but thick steel walls and concrete, except for two things. The far wall was little more than scrap and torn steel from what might have once been a restraining mechanism. The second thing that stood out was the large stains that had set into the concrete.

He didn't even need to open the door to tell it was a blood stain. A large enough one that he was sure the blood loss would have killed whoever it had belonged to, if their injuries hadn't.

He shook his head and looked at the label above the door:

P-2.

One more number to go and one more floor to check.

"Down we go, I guess." Terry sighed.

Terry knew logically that the trip down went quickly, but it seemed to go by so slowly as his mind started to race. This is why he hated pauses in the action, as Rex had called them—the sudden occurrence of chance to actually think, both of what had happened and what was yet to come, filled those moments with a kind of tense nervousness that set his teeth on edge.

It was kind of funny. He'd gone over the consequences that were sure to occur from this break out dozens and dozens of times before actually acting, but it seemed so different now that he'd actually busted out prisoners right underneath Luthor's proverbial nose. Luthor was going to take a lot of interest in finding thing out about him, as well as finding his lost prisoners. Terry wasn't particularly worried about the _legal_ repercussion, even if Luthor traced it back to him; these children sure as hell hadn't been taken legally. The size of their parent's new houses and the types of cars they were now driving implied they may not have been given up _unwillingly_, but it was definitely still illegal.

So even if Luthor found out and tried to press things in court, Terry was confident he could rake the man over the proverbial coals.

On the other hand, if Luthor was completely unrelated to all those assassination attempts and was unwilling to fight dirty, then Terry would eat the Batmobile. A part of him wondered how long it would take for someone to stop sending nobody assassins after him and hired Deathstroke or some Metas or something instead.

But it was either that or leave a bunch of kids imprisoned under Luthor's care. He'd already turned up so late that most of a hallway had been emptied—he couldn't let that keep happening. If he could subtly hand the data he'd gathered from the computers to someone in the Justice League, maybe he could even put Luthor on the spot for a bit. He doubted they'd be able to make anything stick, if Luthor had been careless enough to leave anything to link it to him in the first place, but maybe it could give the Justice League a chance to look a bit harder at Lex Corp—

The doors opened and P-13 whistled behind him at the sight.

The lack of security cameras didn't really surprise him, since he knew Ace's powers worked through stuff like that. They probably had a collar on her too, but with a girl whose main power is to drive people hopelessly, incurably insane, they'd probably taken every precaution they could. In that light, having everything manned by robots that wouldn't be at risk made sense too, so he wasn't sure why he found that surprising. The weapons they were equipped with were a little more surprising, but while a part of him smoldered at the thought of surrounding a little girl with armed machines programmed to hurt or kill her if need be, a more logical part reminded him that she was a very powerful Metahuman who'd showed a variety of abilities.

He still took a bit of pleasure in throwing an explosive Batarang into the eye of the first one that turned their way. He produced two more to deal with the rest, but paused as a blast of fire demolished the first and an invisible force picked up the second before crushing it like a beer can.

Putting away his weapons, he nodded in thanks at P-13 and P-12 and silently stepped past the remains of the robot, moving to the metal wall that blocked the other half of the room from sight. He was pretty sure it was controlled electronically, but there didn't seem to be any keypads. The robots had probably opened and closed it remotely, since he doubted the scientists came down here unless it was necessary.

Then again, if Terry had been one of the people to imprison an emotional teenager with the potential to make his brains run out of his ears, he probably wouldn't want to come down here either.

He pondered whether he should try to hack into it, let Mother Box try to open it, Boom Tube in, or flat out blow down the door when P-10 stepped forward, cracking his knuckles.

"Allow me," He said, literally sinking his fingers into the door and planting his feet to brace himself—and then with a grunt and a heave of breath, he tore the entire wall down.

Suddenly, Terry remembered why working with a team was awesome.

"Thank you, Ten." He said, stepping past him to look for Ace. The conditions she was held in were, honestly, nowhere near the worst he'd ever seen, but he'd seen the Prisons on Qward, so that didn't mean much.

The conditions were clean and there were no visible injuries on Ace, but there wasn't much of her visible period. Some kind of helmet covered her entire head. Most of it was simple, smooth metal, including the places where most helmets would have eyeholes. There were a series of holes to breathe through and a few signs of underlying circuitry, but that was it. Her hands were bound in the metallic bucket-like cuffs they used for high-security prisoners, probably to keep her from touching or attempting to do anything to her helmet or the power-restraining collar around her neck.

Terry grimaced. He doubted there were any physical injuries, but he couldn't say what psychological effects there might be from locking a young girl in these conditions without sight, touch, or freedom for who knows how long. It was a cruel thing to do to a kid and a part of him rued the fact that he hadn't hurt the scientists upstairs a bit more while taking them down.

He moved to her side, being careful to make his footsteps loud enough to be heard so she would know he was coming.

"Hold on just a second while I get you out of there." He said, so that she would know he wasn't just another one of her robot captors, but keeping his voice soothing so as not to startle her.

He reached out and gently raised a hand to the helmet covering her face. A part of him was a bit worried of how she might react—after being kept in conditions like this for who knows how long, pretty much any reaction would be possible. She could have shrunk away, started to shake, or even tried to attack him and he wouldn't have been surprised.

But she didn't do any of that. In fact, she didn't react to him in any way, which may have been the worst possible reaction.

Not that he'd been especially optimistic about what state she'd be in when he came here. It had been a long time before he was born, but the Ace in his home reality had willingly gone along with the Joker without complaint after being freed by him and the reports in both the Justice League's records and the Batcomputer hadn't exactly presented an image of completely mental health. In fact, she'd supposedly been stoic to the point of being unresponsive during the first half of the Las Vegas Incident.

He silently began to remove the helmet, unlocking it in three places in the back before he could even start to take it off. It didn't simply slide off, however, as another segment of the helmet went firmly under her chin, and around the back of her neck. Shaking his head, he unlocked it in the fourth place—if nothing else, he had to give the makers of it credit; getting out of this helmet on your own would have been pretty damn hard, especially with your hands bound. If they put this much effort into keeping the Joker from escaping, maybe he'd break out of Arkham less.

After he was done, the helmet opened like a flower separating along each of the locks and he carefully removed it and got his first real look at Ace.

While she didn't show any signs of having been physically harmed, it was obvious that she hadn't been given a great deal of care, either. Her hair was long and unruly, in an 'I haven't had a hair cut in years' sort of way. While all of the people kept here were pale, Ace was an especially bad case, to the point of almost looking sickly. Sweat covered her face from the stuffiness of the helmet and the way she blinked rapidly made him think it was probably running into her eyes, so he ran one of his sleeves across her brow, wiping it away as best he could. The few places of color on her skin were where the helmet had been pressed against her face and they stood out in struck contrast, fiercely red against her ghostly pallor. She was thin, too, and while he wouldn't say she had been starved or anything, she would probably be a lot better off if she ate more.

Taking that in, Terry worked his jaw. He wanted to take a quick trip upstairs and kick all of those scientists in the head, but he wasn't here to take vengeance on them, he was here to get a group of kids to safety. As long as he got them out okay, he could get them all nutritionists or psychiatrists or whatever they needed, but he had to get them out.

As for the scientists…he'd let their bosses think of their punishment when they found out how they failed. He took a little bit more pleasure in that thought then would be considered professionally appropriate for a Batman before shaking himself.

Undoing Ace's handcuffs was a lot easier then taking off her helmet and he cast them casually to the side. Ace silently looked at her hands after resting them on her knees, interested in a way only someone who hadn't seen them in years would be.

"Hey boss, are we getting out of here any time soon or what?" P-13 asked impatiently, walking into the room. Ace lifted her eyes to watch him solemnly. After a moment of staring, she dropped her eyes back down to her hands.

"Just a moment," Terry soothed. "I just have to remove her collar and we'll all leave here together."

Ace's head snapped towards him so abruptly he was worried for a second that she might have given herself whiplash and she stared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes—her first emotional reaction in what had likely been a long, long time.

"Really?" She asked, a glimmer of hope appearing in her voice and eyes.

Terry smiled at her and unlocked her collar with now practiced ease.

"Really," He assured. "Can you walk?"

Ace tried to stand, but it was obvious her muscles had atrophied with years of disuse, so he stopped her with a raised hand and scooped her into his arms.

"Don't bother; I've got you." He nodded towards P-13. "We can leave now."

However, P-13 was now staring at the girl in his arms with interest.

"What's your power?" He asked, curious, because Ace was the only one who hadn't given a little display once she was free.

Ace's eyes darted towards him for a moment before looking away.

"Hm…" Terry hummed, before glancing at her. "Well, what do you think? Should I tell him?"

After a moment, Ace shook her head, curling in on herself in his arms to make herself more comfortable.

"Tch," P-13 said. "Fine, be that way. How are we getting out of here, Boss? I hope you brought a truck or a plane or something."

Terry chuckled.

"Something like that," He said, and Mother Box responded without prompt. In a rush of noise and light, the Electron Road opened along the left wall. "Ever heard of Bifrost?"


End file.
